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Goodreads and NetGalley (Blogmas)

As i’m sure most of you are aware, there has been a massive uproar within the book blogging community that centers around Goodreads and NetGalley. Both of these platforms have started to make it even more difficult for any bloggers outside of the U.S to acquire books for review, pushing aside many, many book bloggers around the world.

A huge part of being a book blogger is actually reading books. We read early releases and ARCs in order to review them, giving new books a platform to be discovered by so many people. It has become a community of bloggers, not a business or something to make money. Just a lot of people with very similar interests trying to create excitement for the same thing.

Sites such as NetGalley and Goodreads have been absolutely fantastic for bloggers. They both are at the forefront of book discovery online. They offer giveaways in order for us to obtain new releases for blog content, they enhance the community aspect of YA reading and help us make new friends and work colleagues. Obviously the main point of it being, they actually help us to gain blog content! There is not a book blogger out there that is not grateful for continuous content options for their blogs. A time comes quite often with book blogging when you run out of ideas to talk about, and in order to combat that, a book review is always a useful filler and an excuse to promote something you did or didn’t like, share your views even.

However, it’s been a very prominent part of the media at the moment that NetGalley and Goodreads are making it increasingly difficult for anyone outside of America to obtain a book for review or new release for blogging purposes. These are sites that were created for the partnership of bloggers and publishers or authors. They allowed us to make connections with authors who worked hard on novels that we could offer free promotion to, enforcing this wonderful community we have going on at the moment.

The U.S seems to have it all when blogging and vlogging is concerned. Any of the major sites and companies are based in the U.S, and U.S publishers are far more willing to work with bloggers it seems. It makes it hard when you’re a U.K based blogger (or anywhere else in the world) to actually make a dent in to the book world and share your opinions and advertise. Keeping in mind that a lot of us do this for none or very little money at all.

As the community of bloggers is growing, companies are seeing more money in it, it seems. Which sadly means the pushing out of hard working people in order to work cheaper. I am apart of both of the named sites and have supported them up until now, but so far it’s been a very give and take attitude, and i don’t really want to keep giving without receiving anything back. Bloggers work hard. A lot of us are doing Blogmas, we post weekly when we’re not reviewing something to promote it or working on other book related campaigns.

We do the amount of work to enjoy the rewards we get. However with Goodreads and NetGalley seemingly turning their backs on anyone out of the U.S, its hard to see where any of the rewards are coming from anymore. Speaking solely from a U.K bloggers perspective, there are not many reasons to keep doing this apart from the community benefits (which is one hell of a benefit i must admit).

I really hope this isn’t the beginning of the end for book bloggers. It’s been hard enough keeping a blog going without living in America, let alone without any of the available resources for us. If you have any thoughts on this, i’d be very interested to know in the comments.